[page 23] Abstract: This essay offers an ecocritical reading of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: The Return (2017). Within The Return, Lawrence Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn) claims that “our air, our water, our Earth—the very soil itself—our food, [and] our bodies [are] poisoned,” and audiences accordingly witness a variety of vomiting, infected, and irritated bodies throughout the series. These toxic bodies highlight the contamination of trans-corporeal networks, indicating that the town of Twin Peaks has been affected by a series of environmental crises which—within The Return—are symbolized collectively through the development and fallout of nuclear weapons. By offering a reading of how man-made contaminants enter, poison, and pass through the trans-corporeal bodies of Twin Peaks, this essay demonstrates the ways in which The Return encourages an appreciation of the trans-corporeality of all life on earth.
Keywords: ecocriticism, trans-corporeality, toxic bodies, anthropocene
Towards the conclusion of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks (1990-1991), Lucy Moran (Kimmy Robertson) asks Andy Brennan (Harry Goaz) what he knows “about saving our planet,” contemplating the world that her child will be born into. Andy, after a brief pause, states that he knows that the planet is “in lots of trouble” and that “Styrofoam never dies for as long as you live.” This revelation, according to the script for episode 27, causes Andy and Lucy to “huddle together” and “consider man’s fate” (Engels and Peyton 3). While this exchange is played for laughs, Andy and Lucy’s discussion of environmentalism—which, significantly, is framed by Lucy’s declaration that she will take “fate into [her] own hands” by choosing the father of her child—reveals Twin Peaks’ interests in ecological issues on both a local and global scale: local in terms of a parental concern for the fate of Lucy and Andy’s unborn child and global in terms of a concern for “man’s fate” overall. [page 24]
Set twenty-five years later, Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) presents Lucy and Andy’s twenty-four-year-old son, Wally Brando (Michael Cera), living in a world that continues to be “in lots of trouble.” For that reason, Lawrence Jacoby’s (Russ Tamblyn) internet radio show, The Dr. Amp Blast, works to publicize the horrors of the contemporary environmental situation. Through a series of impassioned monologues, Jacoby tells his audience that, because of human pollutants, “our air, our water, our Earth—the very soil itself—our food, [and] our bodies [are] poisoned.” Consequently, if the show’s audience hopes to “save the children,” they need to “stop distracting” themselves with “diverting bullshit” and “shovel [their] way out of the shit!”
Throughout the Twin Peaks franchise, then, the local and global consequences of humanity’s interference in nature are interrogated through an exploration of the planet’s movement into the Anthropocene. 1 In The Return, the impact of human agency is measured in a variety of ways, ranging from commentaries on nuclear fission to the contamination of the atmosphere.2 In this essay, however, I will focus on The Return’s representations of trans-corporeality, demonstrating what Stacy Alaimo describes as “the material interconnections between the human and the more-than-human world” (Bodily Natures 2). This approach will make possible an ecocritical consideration of the effects of industrialization on animal and plant life in addition to facilitating an exploration of how the human body is affected through its interactions with the environment. By offering an ecocritical reading of the ways in which The Return captures some of the environmental crises of the twenty-first century, this essay will explore how Lynch and Frost’s representations of pollution, toxicity, and contamination encourage the appreciation of the trans-corporeality of all life on earth.3
“Listen to the Sounds”: The Silent Spring of Twin Peaks
Ecocriticism considers how the relationships between humanity and the environment are represented in cultural produc-[page 25]tions. Quite often, writings on ecocriticism begin with a consideration of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), a work that offered a study on the effects of pesticides since the Second World War. Silent Spring opened with a fable which highlighted the symbiotic relationships between the environment and humanity. This fable, which offers a narrative that moved from pastoral past to apocalyptic future, notably utilizes an analogy which works to establish a parallel between pesticide pollution and radioactive fallout. In adopting this rhetorical strategy, Carson was responding to contemporaneous anxieties, using understandings of nuclear weapons as “a point of reference to help people understand the hazards of pesticides” (Lutts 220).
Carson’s consideration of nuclear weapons, much like that in The Return, points towards “a nuclear origin for the Anthropocene” (Kosmina 966). However, the topic of Carson’s investigation—namely, the relationships between environmental health and human health—can also be used to highlight the ways in which different forms of pollution are used as recurring tropes within The Return. Carson’s fable reads:
THERE WAS ONCE a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. . . . Along the roads, laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler’s eye through much of the year. . . . The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life. . . . Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children, who would be stricken suddenly while [page 26] at play and die. . . . There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example—where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. . . . It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of . . . bird voices there was now no sound; only silence. . . . No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves. (10)
In this fable, Carson establishes ideas which will later become important within ecocriticism: she describes a pastoral past in which human and more-than-human life “seemed to live in harmony,” noting that “the countryside was . . . famous for . . . its bird life.” Here, readers are being presented with an idealistic vision of the symbiosis among all life on earth. This symbiosis is soon disrupted: in the apocalyptic future, Carson reveals that “a strange blight” has contaminated the town, resulting in illness and death within both human and more-than-human communities. The cause of this malady, according to Carson, is “the people . . . themselves”: that is, humanity, through its interference in nature—whether through pesticides, radiation, or any other pollutant—has contaminated the planet and its inhabitants. This disruption is signaled to readers through the haunting image of a silent spring, at which point there will be “no sound” because “the birds” are “gone.” Carter Soles, in their reading of this fable, concludes that “the destruction and disappearance of birds is a barometer by which the extent of an imagined and yet very real impending environmental apocalypse can be gauged” (526-529).
The movement from Twin Peaks to The Return mirrors the narrative development of Carter’s fable. No doubt, Carter’s insistence that the disappearance of birds is an indication of environmental change is demonstrated through the alternative openings to Twin Peaks and The Return. In both cases, Brydie Kosmina argues, these openings serve a paratextual function which establish “the show as a text about place, [page 27] environment, and industrialization” (972). Moreover, by interrogating the differences between the opening images of Twin Peaks and The Return, the environmental consequences of industrial development can be foregrounded, highlighting the ways in which the town of Twin Peaks has entered the silent spring of Carson’s fable.
In the title sequence which introduces Seasons 1 and 2 of Twin Peaks, viewers are greeted by the image of a varied thrush perched upon a branch before dissolving into a shot of the Packard Sawmill. Sherryl Vint reads these opening titles with a particular focus on animals and nature, writing:
The opening credits . . . begin with a peaceful close-up of a beautiful bird, transition through a dissolve fade into an image of the mill’s smokestacks cutting the view of the mountains, dissolve again into a close-up on the automated sharpening of the timber saw, and finally rest on an undisturbed view of the mountains. . . . This contrast between animals and nature as opposed to machines shapes the entire series. (73)
In the opening titles, then, themes of duality and contrariety are being presented with a particular focus on the natural and the manmade. Yet, during the opening credits at least, these two contraries appear to be functioning in harmony. Franck Boulègue argues that,
following the bird and tree image of the opening credits, a distant shot of a factory appears. . . . After nature, industry; but a form of industry directly linked to nature, deriving its raw material there. . . . What is visually worthy of attention is the slow upward flow of the smoke towards the sky, an air form that will soon be mirrored in the image of the cascade of the majestic White Tail Falls. . . . This view of industry does not evoke a sense of pollution or even desecration as it appears to be a natural industry at work, and could even be seen as another life force generating new elements through its action. (48) [page 28]
Thus, while audiences might be inclined to read the opening credits of Twin Peaks with the pollutants of industry in mind, there is an argument to be made that these credits are presenting a symbiotic and harmonious relationship between the natural and the manmade.4 Through this, the opening credits to Twin Peaks possibly reflect the pastoral past of Carson’s Silent Spring—an idyllic, and perhaps illusory, picture of a world within which animals and humanity are a part of the same interconnected network.5
This network, over the course of the original run, is revealed to be deeply unstable, and, within Part 1 of The Return, the opening images demonstrate that the world that audiences once knew has changed significantly.6 Indeed, according to Dan Hassler-Forest, The Return deviates from the original series through its investment in reflective nostalgia, “giv[ing] us occasion to consider the passage of time as something that is irreversible, and therefore marked by tragedy and trauma more than reassurance and comfort” (193). In this case, the reflective nostalgia of The Return toys with viewers’ nostalgic memories, using the “irreversible” passage of time to move away from the familiar and the comfortable and into the unfamiliar and the traumatic.7 This uncanny shift is signalled clearly in the opening shots of The Return. Part 1 begins with footage from the finale of Twin Peaks, with Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) telling Dale Cooper (Kyle McLachlan) that she will “see [him] again in twenty-five years.” From here, the viewer travels through a thick fog—moving across time and space—towards the skyline of Twin Peaks. This skyline then cross-fades into a shot of the Packard Sawmill, perhaps encouraging viewers to recall the harmonious images from the original title-sequence.8 Notably, however, this is not the Packard Sawmill of old: rather, this is a sawmill that has been ravaged by the passage of time, offering an unfamiliar glimpse of a familiar location.9 What’s more, the iconic varied thrush—which introduced every episode of the original run of Twin Peaks—is nowhere to be seen.10 The removal of the varied thrush, alongside the distressed Packard [page 29] Sawmill, results in the previously idyllic and harmonious opening of Twin Peaks being disrupted: to return to Carson’s fable, then, the absence of the iconic bird in the opening of The Return might indicate that Twin Peaks has entered the silent spring of the Anthropocene, signalling the coming of an apocalyptic future which is accompanied by illness and death for both human and more-than-human communities.
The differences between the openings to Twin Peaks and The Return tell audiences that, over the course of twenty-five years, something in the world of Twin Peaks has changed. In particular, the absence of animal life and the closure of the Packard Sawmill suggest that the balance between human and more-than-human worlds has been destabilized. The Return explores the causes and the effects of this destabilization, presenting a series of characters who, much like in Carson’s fable, have been affected by a “strange blight” or “evil spell” which is made up of “mysterious maladies” and “new kinds of sickness” (Carson 10). While The Return addresses these ecological issues in an ambiguous manner, the series’ focus on the production and consumption of contaminated materials makes possible a consideration of the trans-corporeality of life in the town of Twin Peaks.
“A Strange Blight”: Trans-corporeality, Corn, and Contamination
The idea of the symbiosis between nature and humanity—and the shared contamination of each during a silent spring—functions as a recurring trope within The Return. Indeed, as a part of The Dr. Amp Blast, Jacoby states:
We’re sinking down deep in the mud, and the fucks are at it again! The same vast global corporate conspiracy. . . . Let’s see what they’re cooking up today. . . . Know the ingredients: just read what’s on the box. In fact, read between the lines. What’s lurking in that toaster waffle, those muffins, that frozen children’s treat? Poison! Deadly poisons. That’s what’s there. And what’s waiting for you? Cancer, leukaemia, auto-immune disorders, [page 30] pulmonary embolism, warts, psoriasis, eczema, cardiac arrest . . . microbial toxins, bacterial toxins, environmental toxins! Our air, our water, our Earth—the very soil itself—our food, our bodies, poisoned. Poisoned!
Within this monologue, Jacoby comments on several issues with a particular focus on the causes and the effects of a poisoned planet during the Anthropocene: Jacoby believes that our air, our water, our Earth, our soil, our food, and our bodies are poisoned. This list emphasizes the interconnectedness of all things, demonstrating the ways in which the environment enters the human body through the inhalation, ingestion, or absorption of air, water, and food, meaning that dirt becomes flesh and that we are “transformed” by what we “consume” (Alaimo, “Trans-Corporeal” 254). 11
Through its focus on the networks of production and consumption, The Dr. Amp Blast highlights what Alaimo describes as the trans-corporeality of human and more-than-human bodies:
Imagining human corporeality as trans-corporeality, in which the human is always intermeshed with the more-than-human world, underlines the extent to which the corporeal substance of the human is ultimately inseparable from ‘the environment.’ It makes it difficult to pose nature as a mere background . . . for the exploits of the human, since ‘nature’ is always as close as one’s own skin—perhaps even closer. Indeed, thinking across bodies may catalyse the recognition that the ‘environment,’ which is too often imagined as inert, empty space or as a resource for human use, is, in fact, a world of fleshy beings with their own needs, claims, and actions. By emphasising the movement across bodies, trans-corporeality reveals the interchanges and interconnections between various bodily natures. (Bodily Natures 2)
Thus, trans-corporeality refers to the ways in which all things within the environment are in constant interchange, meaning that material phenomena move across and through our air, our [page 31] water, our Earth, our soil, our food, and our bodies. Therefore, our actions upon the environment have consequences for both the human and the more-than-human: in other words, human health reflects environmental health and vice versa. Jacoby’s insistence that this environment has been poisoned, then, and his warning that poisons lurk in our waffles is offering a commentary on the “traffic of toxins” (Alaimo, “Trans-Corporeal” 260) that have contaminated our ecosystems, much like Carson was arguing in Silent Spring. The toxic materials which have contaminated the world’s ecosystems are not clearly identified in The Return. However, by considering the material conditions within which items are produced and consumed in The Return, a possible source of contamination can be identified.
The contamination of the planet through human pollutants is demonstrated in The Return through its explorations of production and consumption, and a prominent food item, which is often consumed and expelled in Twin Peaks, is corn. In Part 11 of The Return, Tommy “Hawk” Hill (Michael Horse) unfurls a map which is connected to his “heritage” as “a full-blooded Nez Perce” (Frost 198). The map is a “living thing” which is “very old” but is “always current.” On the bottom right of the map, there is an image of a corn field, described by Hawk as a symbol of “fertility.” Many Indigenous cultures consider corn to be “sacred because it regenerates the human body when people eat the plant; when humans die, their bodies return to the soil, where they feed growing plants” (Adamson 221). The Indigenous knowledges associated with the production and consumption of corn highlight the ways in which trans-corporeal networks function as “the transit between the body and the environment” (Alaimo, Bodily Natures 15), anticipating the Log Lady’s (Catherine Coulson) belief that “we come from the elemental, and return to it. There is change, but nothing is lost” (Frost 321).
Some of the corn on Hawk’s map is “black, diseased, or unnatural.” The corruption of the corn, according to Hawk, is caused by “a fire symbol” that is “a type of fire more like [page 32] modern-day electricity.” Kosmina reads this fire symbol as being representative of “human industrialization,” concluding that “human corruption of the fire impacts the corn” (975-976). If the corn on Hawk’s map functions as a collective symbol of trans-corporeality, the corruption of the corn through industrialization indicates that networks of production and consumption within the map’s ecosystem have been contaminated. The diseased corn appears to infect those who consume it: to the right of the cornfield, there is a depiction of a turkey in black; and, above the turkey, there is a blackened tipi, indicating that toxicity has breached the boundaries of the home. Consequently, much like in Carson’s fable, “a strange blight” has resulted in “mysterious maladies” (Carson 10) affecting human and more-than-human life.
“New Kinds of Sickness”: Toxic Bodies
The significance of the blackened corn, diseased animals, and darkened home stretches beyond the material boundaries of Hawk’s map. Indeed, critical works which focus on The Return consistently circle around words such “infested” (Thorne 46), “pestilence” (Butler 139), and “contamination” (Rooney 125), and Adam Daniel acknowledges that there is “a growing sickness in the quaint Northwest town” (“Under” 59-60). Within The Return, there are a number of human bodies that show “signs of physical illness” (Butler 140), and the physicality of these illnesses is presented viscerally on the skin or through bodily expulsions. Significantly, there are a high number of expulsions, including a young girl who vomits in a car and a man who has an oozing abscess on his cheek. Each of these characters’ stories are characterized by ambiguity, but they collectively contribute to what Lindsay Hallam describes as “a state of collapse, of an almost apocalyptic feeling as though Twin Peaks is in a state of decay, that [it] is all about to fall apart or end.”
The “strange blight” (Carson 10) that stretches across the town of Twin Peaks dramatizes the symbolic pestilence depicted on Hawk’s map, suggesting that the town’s inhabitants [page 33] have, in some way, been contaminated. Yet The Return resists identifying a ulear, singular source of contagion which unites all representations of sickness or infection. Instead, the community of Twin Peaks might be thought of as a collective representation of what Alaimo describes as the toxic body. Alaimo writes:
Certainly, all bodies, human and otherwise, are, to greater or lesser degrees, toxic at this point in history. Even those humans and animals who reside far from the most polluted zones still harbor a chemical stew in their blood and tissues. . . . Since the same chemical substance may poison the workers who produce it, the neighbourhood in which it is produced, and the plants and animals who end up consuming it, the traffic in toxins reveals the interconnections between various movements. (Alaimo, “Trans-Corporeal” 260)
In simpler terms, toxic bodies are those bodies which have been contaminated by the toxication of the planet, and this toxication highlights the ways in which the “material self cannot be disentangled from networks that are simultaneously economic, political, cultural, scientific, and substantial” (Alaimo, Bodily Natures 20).
The toxic intersections between these networks are flagged by Jacoby as a part of The Dr. Amp Blast. Here, Jacoby targets the uses of chemical substances in food production: “They’re feeding our children chemical shit coated in sugar! Why don’t these monsters bite into those tasty treats themselves? [Be]cause they’ll die in the streets! Just like us!” The sites of food production in The Return are deceptively complex and ambiguous, and the show reinforces attitudes which teach us “that consuming locally is both environmentally ethical and healthy for our bodies” (Ray 2). Norma Jennings’ (Peggy Lipton) Double R Diner, for instance, prioritizes ingredients that are “natural, organic, [and] local.”12 Problematically, the ways in which each site of production in The Return is presented to viewers reinforces social hierarchies relating to socio-economic position, with “slow, pure, organic food produc-[page 34]tion” becoming “a symbol for enlightened consumerism” while those who engage in “fast-food habits” are rendered “environmentally suspect” and “ecologically other” (Ray 3).
During Part 9 of The Return, viewers listen in on a conversation between Chloe (Karolina Wydra) and Ella (Sky Ferreira) at the Roadhouse. Ella tells Chloe that she was fired from “serving burgers” at a fast-food restaurant because she came into work while “high.” However, upon getting fired, Chloe started to work “across the fuckin’ street—serving burgers!” This scene has a comedic tone but, at the same time, it captures what Martin Fradley and John A. Riley describe as “the inescapability of [Ella’s] socio-economic situation . . . [and] The Return’s uncompromising fatalism more broadly” (86). The reveal of a “wicked rash” on Ella’s armpit, which provokes an abject response through a close-up and some audible scratching, suggests that Ella’s body has, in some way, become toxic. Indeed, if “the human body is never a rigidly enclosed, protected entity, but is vulnerable to the substances and flows of its environments, which may include industrial environments and their social/economic forces” (Alaimo, Bodily Natures 28), then Ella’s rash might indicate that her body has been contaminated through her environment at the fast-food restaurant: Jeff Jensen speculates that “maybe the young lady ate too much of all that contaminated processed food that Dr. Amp is always railing about.” Alternatively, the rash might be related to Ella’s drug use, with Daniel suggesting that an “epidemic of a drug named ‘Sparkle’ . . . may or [may] not be responsible for the general sickness that appears to have infected the town” (“Kafka’s” 230).
While the irresolution of this scene prevents a clear conclusion, the rash appearing on Ella’s body does suggest that Ella has, in some way, been affected by her environment—whether through her workplace, her drug use, or both—and her irritated trans-corporeal body functions as a reflection of an irritated trans-corporeal world. After all, according to Sandra Steingraber, “our bodies . . . are living scrolls of sorts. What is written there—inside the fibres of our cells and [page 35] chromosomes—is a record of our exposure to environmental contaminants. Like the rings of trees, our tissues are historical documents that can be read by those who know how to decipher the code” (236). The rash on Ella’s body is thus a record of her exposure to contaminants. While the exact source of these contaminants in unclear, what is clear is that a series of interconnected, contaminated networks—whether in terms of fast food or drugs—have caused Ella’s rash: her rash, then, is a trans-corporeal reflection of the social and economic forces which, in this case, control the means of production; in other words, the local irritation upon Ella’s skin is a symptom of a broader, global issue.
“The People Had Done It Themselves”: Toxic Fallout
While the sources which have contaminated the trans-corporeal networks of production and consumption are not explicitly identified in The Return, the events of Part 8 of The Return indicate that the toxication of the planet and its inhabitants began with the development of nuclear weapons. Part 8 of The Return depicts the first detonation of a nuclear weapon at the Trinity Test Site in 1945. The site of the atomic explosion has often been described as the origin of evil in the series. No doubt, the bomb functions as a symbol of “the evil that men do” and its fallouts, including the birthed bodies of The Experiment, BOB, the “frog-moth,” and possibly The Woodsmen, are the consequences of those actions: these toxic figures function as those who contaminate, infect, or possess, entering the trans-corporeal bodies of humans and more-than-humans through our air, our water, and our food, poisoning both “the water” and the “well.” The Woodsmen encourage us to “drink full and descend” when travelling over the airwaves while a young Sarah Palmer eats what Hallam describes as “a monstrous mutated fusion of a frog and a moth.”
Importantly, The Return presents a relationship between the atomic blast and the diseased, trans-corporeal corn depicted on Hawk’s map. In Part 3 of The Return, the office of Gordon Cole (David Lynch) includes two pictures of signifi-[page 36]cance: “a giant poster-sized reproduction of a mushroom cloud” and “a large print depicting an ear of corn behind which plumes grey smoke” (Rooney 133). According to Rooney, “the pictorial correspondence between golden corn husk and nuclear explosion links the office space arrangement of Gordon Cole (whose name is close to being an anagram of golden corn) with Deputy Sheriff Hawk’s ancient map with its black corn, fire and atom-bomb-like symbols” (133). The relationship between the nuclear explosion and the diseased corn is explored in The Secret History of Twin Peaks (2017). Here, the Archivist acknowledges that the plutonium used in the first nuclear weapon was manufactured at the Hanford site in Washington—a nuclear production complex which was constructed in 1943. The land used for the Hanford site was seized by the government in 1942, leading to the forceful displacement of several communities. Indeed, according to the Archivist in The Secret History, “over 1,500 people were ‘relocated’ from two nearby farming communities” in addition to the “people of three Native American nations, including Lewis and Clark’s old friends the Nez Perce” (Frost 117). Hawk’s Nez Perce parents left the reservation “just before the Hanford nuclear site came online” (198). However, “the water and land rights that had been granted to the Nez Perce were fouled for generations to come,” with “declassified documents reveal[ing] that in 1949, soon after the war, officials at Hanford covertly released massive amounts of raw, irradiated uranium fuel into the local environment” (117). Contaminated waste from the complex was released into the soil and groundwater; in turn, “some liquids evaporated, leaving surface residues for plant and animal uptake as well as being dispersed by the wind” (Gephart 7). For that reason, the Hanford site is often considered to be “the most toxic place in America” (Gephart, qtd. in Peterson et al. 381), and the Archivist documents how “citizens in the area were . . . routinely tested to see what effect these contaminants would have on them, and in the next few years thyroid disease and cancer rates soared” (Frost 117). Consequently, it is likely [page 37] that the corn on Hawk’s map became diseased through the contamination of Nez Perce land.
The contaminated waste from the Hanford site poisoned “our air, our water, our Earth—the very soil itself—our food, [and] our bodies,” meaning that the development of nuclear weapons functions as the initial source of contamination in the world of Twin Peaks. This moment signaled the coming of the silent spring, anticipating the ecological blights caused by the introduction of radiation and a variety of chemicals into the ecosystem. Carson writes:
Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species—man—acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world. During the past quarter century this power has not only increased to one of disturbing magnitude but it has changed in character. The most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contam-ination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world—the very nature of its life. Strontium 90, released through nuclear explosions into the air, comes to earth in rain or drifts down as fallout, lodges in soil, enters into the grass or corn or wheat grown there, and in time takes up its abode in the bones of a human being, there to remain until his death. (12)
For Carson, then, the technological and scientific advancements of the twentieth century resulted in a far-reaching fallout that has changed “the very nature of the world,” with a variety of forms of man-made contaminants—including those produced by nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and pesticides—entering, poisoning, and passing through the trans-[page 38]corporeal bodies of the planet. In The Return, this period of contamination is symbolized collectively through the dropping of the bomb.
In the world of Twin Peaks, then, human interference in nature caused evil contaminants to be born; and, slowly but surely, the products of that interference were then, over the course of the Anthropocene, consumed by the human and more-than-human inhabitants of the planet, rendering their trans-corporeal bodies as toxic—and this toxication is reflected in the possessed, irritated, vomiting, and infected bodies that exist within the town of Twin Peaks.
Notes
1. The Anthropocene, a term coined by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer, refers to a “new geological epoch distinct from the Holocene” which emphasizes the “pervasive and enduring” impact of human activity (Heise 23).
2. For a further exploration of representations of the Anthropocene in The Return, see both Kosmina and Rooney.
3. Because of recent developments in ecocriticism and animal studies, an increasing number of scholars are interrogating the ecological underpinnings of the Twin Peaks franchise, revealing that ways in which “Twin Peaks has always engaged with the ecological” (Hageman 10). For instance, Vint argues that “images of animals and nature in Twin Peaks are deeply enmeshed in the series’ meditation upon the inevitable loss of innocence to encroaching modernity” (71). Similarly, Elizabeth Parker, in The Forest and the Eco Gothic: The Deep Dark Woods in the Popular Imagination (2020), claims that Twin Peaks is “visually dominated by the presence of wood,” with its interior scenes being “constantly punctuated by images of the outside forest” (130). Finally, Kosmina offers an exploration of how The Return depicts “the naturecultures of irradiated suburbia and posthumanity in a time of planetary ecological crisis” (966).
4. Kosmina argues that “the credits for the original show feature lingering shots of the machinery in the sawmill, tying the surreal tragedy of the show to the surreal tragedy of industrialization” (972).
5. Andreas Halskov argues that “the Varied Thrush in the title sequence of Twin Peaks could be a reference to the [page 39] Robin from Blue Velvet (1986), pointing to the potential phoniness of idyllic images” (TV Peaks 71).
6. For a consideration of the ways in which the relationships between the natural and the manmade are destabilized in Twin Peaks, see Vint.
7. The uncanny atmosphere of the opening credits to The Return also emerges through its auditory cues. While the instrumental version of Julee Cruise’s “Falling” is, like in the opening credits to Twin Peaks, used for the opening credits to The Return, the 2017 version is, according to Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, imbued “with an element of the uncanny. In this instance, the main title cue prefigures the third season’s combination of familiarity and frightening strangeness. . . . The ‘Falling’ theme accompanies a series of shots that are familiar but slightly different” (55).
8. Halskov acknowledges the nostalgic function of the inclusion of the sawmill, writing: “The iconic sawmill is a nostalgic reminder of ‘old Twin Peaks’ and a signifier of transformation” (“No Place”).
9. For instance, Kosmina argues that, “by The Return, the mill has failed and the town is slowly failing around it, revealing the slow catastrophe of anthropogenic climate change: human society has built extractive industry into its very fabric and follows in its wake as that industry collapses” (972).
10. The absence of the varied thrush from the opening credits of The Return was noticed by the Twin Peaks community. Michael McGuirk argues that “the disappearance of the varied thrush is the symbol of a decaying planet.”
11. Significantly, the consumption of food does serve a transformative function in Twin Peaks. After all, as Lorna Piatti-Farnell argues, food is “a conspicuously noticeable presence in Twin Peaks” (89), and the original series included lavish breakfasts, celebrations of coffee and doughnuts, and “massive, massive quantities” of cherry pie. In The Return, the presence of food continues to be prominent, and the consumption of food often produces an effect within the consumer, demonstrating the trans-corporeality of the body. For instance, the consumption of Jerry Horne’s (David Patrick Kelly) banana bread and spreadable jam produces an effect in the mind “that’s ideal for creative sojourns of a solitary nature” and Cooper’s consumption of [page 40] pancakes, coffee, and cherry pie contributes to his returning consciousness—and that’s not to mention Lucy’s consumption of chocolate bunnies being a “remedy for gas.”
12. The Double R Diner is a nostalgic representation of 1950s America, evoking a series of “solid social values” from “a by-gone era” (Piatti-Farnell 96). Part 13 of The Return reveals that the Double R Diner has, since the original series, become a franchise of five restaurants. The ingredients used at the “flagship diner” in Twin Peaks are “natural, organic, [and] local.” Outside of Twin Peaks, the remaining diners use “their discretion about where they get the ingredients.” To Norma, the ambiguity surrounding this discretion indicates that they are not using organic produce, and she has heard “that our pies at the other locations are just not as good as the ones we have here.” Despite Norma’s claims about the lower qualities of the pies at the franchised diners, her diner in Twin Peaks is failing to make a profit because Norma is “spending too much per pie and not charging enough.” In short, the diners that are using ingredients of a lesser quality while charging a higher price are more profitable than Norma’s affordable pies which are more expensive to produce. The commercialization of the Double R Diner reflects the pressures of modernity and, in particular, the pressures to adhere to low-quality produce. Thus, the Double R Diner is a site which resists the modernization necessitated by the demands of capitalism. For that reason, “although it is a business, and therefore part of the capitalist enterprise, the diner’s family owned status places it in a different category when compared to corporate diner and fast food companies such as McDonald’s, which are conceptually very far removed from any sense of community spirit” (97).
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Dr Mark Yates is a Lecturer in English Literature, working within the School of Arts, Media, and Creative Technology at the University of Salford. His research interests include eighteenth-century literature and print culture in addition to the Gothic and Horror in literature, film, and television.
MLA citation (print):
Yates, Mark. “Our Air, Our Water, Our Earth”: Trans-corporeality and Toxic Bodies in Twin Peaks: The Return." Supernatural Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Art, Media, and Culture, vol. 11, no. 2, 2026, pp. 23-43.